Tire Swing
by Gratiae
Summary: Spencer and Calliope spend the afternoon together. Fluff. One-Shot.


**Disclaimer: I do not own Criminal Minds.**

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"_The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It is not that we seize them, but that they seize us." – Ashley Montagu_

o o o o

4 October, 2008

"So, what you're telling me is that I've got you all to myself for an entire afternoon?" Calliope Sellers grinned happily as she spoke into the mobile she held to her ear as she walked along the side of the Lee Drive towards her house, enjoying how all the trees in the forest surrounding her were started to change from green to a rich golden yellow. "Really now? Well, String Bean, I think, if we put our heads together, we can come up with some way to entertain ourselves."

She rounded the bend and laughed when she saw the lanky frame of her boyfriend leaning against his beat up Volvo outside the gate to her property. Hearing her laugh, he looked up and smiled when he saw her, closing the phone and dropping it into his pocket. He started laughing as she ran the last thirty yards towards him and nearly tackled him, wrapping her arms around his waist and hugging him tightly.

"Hello, Sweetheart," he greeted her as he returned the affection, his arms hugging her shoulders. She pushed herself up onto her toes and kissed his cheek.

"I'm glad you're back from Florida. I missed you. You were gone a whole week this time. Are all your cases usually this long?" She asked him, still not letting go.

"Some, not all."

"Did you catch him? Her? It? The abominable snowman, perhaps? I dunno."

"The abominable snowman?" Dr. Spencer Reid looked skeptically at the tiny redhead in his arms.

"Hey. It could happen."

"Is the abominable snowman going to start kidnapping children and holding them hostage until we find a way to fix and reverse global warming and restore its' home to it's natural state?"

"Well, now that you gave him the idea, yeah. Shesh, Spencer. The abominable snowman can hear everything. He listens through the trees. Didn't you know that's why there are so many trees on earth? Scientist try to feed us all this crap about how it's because we need oxygen and they need carbon dioxide and so we provide the trees with carbon dioxide while they provide us with oxygen, but no! That's not right! It's so the abominable snowman can hear everything we say. It's like Big Brother, but worse. Because he's big and he's furry. And look where we're standing. In the middle of the woods. He could start with me! Because I'm little and from a distance I look like a child! You've practically sold me to the abominable snowman, Spencer! How could you?!"

"How, uh, how much coffee have you had to drink today, Calliope?" Spencer asked, laughing.

Calliope looked down at her hands as she mouthed to herself and ticked off the cups on her fingers. "Um… I lost track after thirteen."

Spencer smiled at her and resisted the urge to kiss her as she looked up at him sheepishly. "I think that's why your hands are shaking. Too much caffeine and not enough food. You've been painting," he held up her paint-stained hands as proof and briefly touched the flecks of paint on her cheeks, "and you tend to forget to eat when you're painting. Between that and the amount of coffee you drink it's no wonder you're so skinny."

"I've been eating plenty. Plenty, plenty, plenty."

"Yet, not enough to absorb all the caffeine you've ingested."

"Ingested's a funny word. It sounds funny. In-gest-ed. When you said it like that it sounds like you're saying 'in jest' with an 'e-d' at the end. I like the word 'jest.' It makes me think of court jesters and the funny hats and the tights and Clopin from Hunchback and then that makes me think of jousting. I don't now how the two are related."

"You have had far too much coffee. Get in the car and let me in the gate, crazy."

"What? You don't want to stand out by the road all afternoon? Where's your sense of adventure, Spencer?"

"I left it back in Sarasota."

"Oh. Right. Did you catch the abominable snowman?"

"No, but we did catch the unsubs."

"Plural?"

"William Harris and Steven Baleman. Four victims."

"What did they –"

"No," Spencer said firmly, shaking his head and cutting off her question. "We had an agreement, remember? You can know the unsubs and the victims, but not the details of the crime. I don't want you hearing about the details; you don't need to know them. I don't want my job changing the way you look at people and at the world. The way you see is too special to ruin."

"Spencer…" Calliope studied him for a moment, but his expression was resolute and determined in his decision. "Alright. Come on, let's go inside. I think you're right – my stomach's starting to growl and I can't remember if I ate lunch or not."

"If you're stomach's growling then you probably didn't."

"See, that's why you're the genius. I wouldn't have reached that conclusion without you, Spencer." Calliope teased as he opened the car door for her and she sat down.

"Sarcasm is unbecoming, Sweetheart," he teased back before closing the door and getting in the car himself while she opened the gate.

ooo ooo ooo ooo

"I want to go swimming." Calliope said factually as she tossed her paper plate in the trashcan.

"Swimming? It's October."

"So? Come on. Please? Please, please, please?"

"I, uh…"

"What? Don't you know how to swim?"

"I-I know how to swim." _I just don't want to make a fool of myself in front of you_.

"Well then, let's go. It's warm today. It's probably going to be the last swim-able day for the rest of the year. Please?" Calliope widened her eyes and looked up at him pleadingly.

"That's not playing fairly," he sighed, folding.

"So?" She smiled widely knowing she'd won. "There's extra suits in the dresser in the guest room. One of them should fit you. I'm going to go get changed."

Spencer sighed as she traipsed out of the kitchen to her bedroom. Following after her, he closed the door to the guestroom behind him and found a set of swim trunks that looked promising. He looked at himself in the mirror for a second after he changed and groaned.

_I look like an androgynous Muppet. Why can't I look like Morgan? She's going to take one look at me and change her mind._

He folded his clothes back up and put them neatly on the bed, made sure all the suits in the drawer where folded and organized, went to the bathroom, washed his hands, anything to stay in the room a little longer. Knowing he was being stupid and running out of things to do before he had to leave the privacy of the bedroom, he steeled himself and walked out into the main part of the house.

"Hey there, Handsome. You take longer than I do," Calliope smiled at him from where she sat on a barstool waiting. She had a bright purple towel wrapped around her and Spencer could see the dark green straps of her swimsuit on her shoulders. Awkwardly, he caught the matching towel she threw at him as it started to uncurl in midair. "Sorry, I always forget towels don't fly very well until after I've already thrown it. Maybe I should tattoo that on my forehead. But then I'd have to be looking in a mirror to see it, and it'd be backwards anyways. That's never made sense to me. Why do people always say you should write things on your forehead? You can't see your forehead. Weird. Anyways! Let's go."

Spencer let her grab his hand and pull him out of the house. He followed down the porch steps to the grass, listening while she chattered about nothing.

"Calliope, the pool's over there…"

"I know." She turned and threw him the crooked smile he loved. "Trust me."

"I would, but the last time you said that to me didn't turn out too well."

"One time!"

"You've only told me to trust you twice. That's a fifty percent chance of something bad happening."

"You're a pest."

"Where are we going?"

"There's a pond behind those trees. That's where I like to swim."

"If you like to swim in the pond, why do you have a pool?"

"Because the pool can heat up. I keep trying to boil the pond to heat it up in the winter, but I haven't had any luck yet. Plus, not everyone likes swimming in the pond."

"What if I didn't like the pond?"

"I don't care?"

"I didn't think you would."

"Come on, stop being a pansy and let's go."

"We are going. Wait, you have a tire swing?"

"Yup! Honestly, the pond is the entire reason I bought the land. My Uncle Mark and Aunt Ashley had a big pond, it was more like a small lake, I guess, on the back of their property and, when my cousins and I were little, we loved to swim in it. It had a tire swing hanging off this big, old oak tree. Swinging off the tire into the water was quite literally our favorite summer activity. When I was nine, I let go too soon and landed on this patch of rocks and gashed my back open over my shoulder blade. Had to go to the hospital for that one. Twenty-three stitches and it took an hour and a half for the nurse to get all the rock fragments out of my shoulder blade. It was sick. Totally awesome. Mammy wasn't too happy with me, but that was the day I became Eli's hero. Eli's one of my cousins by the way. He's the one that put up the tire swing for me. The day I bought the property, before the house was even built, he came over and hung up a tire swing for me. It was then that I knew how much he truly loved me."

"You're crazy."

"All the best people are. I tried to be normal, but I got bored five seconds in." Calliope dipped her foot into the water and grinned. She pulled her hand from his and tossed her towel onto the picnic table before scrambling up the wooden stairs to the tire swing. Spencer laughed at her enthusiasm until he spotted a small coloured circle on the small of her back. She was too far away for him to see it properly, but he was pretty sure it was a tattoo.

He watched her as she let go of the tire swing, flew through the air and splashed into the water. She resurfaced a few seconds later, pushing wet hair out of her eyes, a strand of shocking green sticking to her forehead. "Aren't you going to come in?"

"I'm coming," he reassured her as he dropped his towel on the table next to hers and walked towards the water.

"You have to use the tire swing!"

"My lack of coordination doesn't really allow for things like that," Spencer admitted and waded in.

"Chicken." Calliope smiled before ducking under the water again and swimming towards him.

ooo ooo ooo ooo

"I'm getting all prune-y," Calliope sighed happily as she floated on her back. The sun had almost disappeared beneath the treetops and Spencer couldn't remember an afternoon as relaxing and full of simple fun as this one. If he was being honest, he wasn't sure he'd ever had an afternoon quite like this one. He had caught a few glances of the small tattoo on her lower back, but could only tell that it was purple and white with some black lettering or something in the middle. He wanted to know what it was, but couldn't pluck up the courage to ask her.

"Spencer?"

"Huh?"

"You were spacing again, weren't you?"

"I'm sorry, I was thinking."

"What were you thinking about, String Bean?"

"Nothing."

"Liar. You just said you were thinking and I know you enough to know that you don't think about nothing. You can say you don't want to tell me, but don't lie to me."

"I was wondering what your tattoo was of," he blurted out before he thought and blushed, turning his head to look away from her. When he looked back at her, he saw her blushing and looking a bit embarrassed. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay," she told him, her face still as bright red as her hair. "It's my favorite flower – a purple and white dahlia – with a scroll and stylus in the center. The scroll and stylus is how I sign my paintings. On, uh, on my eighteenth birthday, my best friend Jill and I went and got tattoos. She's a couple months older than I am, so she waited until my birthday so we could get them together. She has a ballerina on her leg. I'm, uh… I'm not supposed to have a tattoo. I'd always wanted one, but, when Mammy found out, she sort of forbid it. But I was going through a bit of a silent rebellion stage. I think I still am, but I don't think you're supposed to be rebelling at twenty-five. Every time go home she tells me I look like a hoodlum with the green and blue strips in my hair - I haven't told her about the purple yet. That's a relatively new addition. So, she doesn't know about my tattoo. Or really anything about my life that she wouldn't approve of. I kind of keep everything I know she'd disapprove of a secret."

"So you hide who you are from her?"

"Yeah, sort of. I just don't want to disappoint her."

"How could you possibly disappoint someone? Calliope, you're wonderful." Spencer watched her, both concerned and a bit stunned that she worried about disappointing people. Calliope radiated self-confidence and never seemed to worry about what other people thought of her. She was the last person he would have dreamt of having self-image problems.

"I am amazing, aren't I?" she smiled, laughing. "It's not that. You know the pictures of me as a kid? The ones on my bookshelf? Last time you were over you picked up a picture of Jill and I when we were six. We both had on these frilly white dresses, remember? Yeah, Mammy wants me to be the grown up version of that. I would rather be dead than be that person. For me, that life is like an invisible prison; I ran as fast as I could without hurting Mammy. If she saw me looking like the hippie I usually dress like, she'd probably have a heart attack. She nearly had a stroke when I decided not to join the Daughters of the American Revolution."

"You don't dress like a hippie," he grinned at the image of a Seventies Calliope.

"Mmmm… I lean towards it at times," Calliope smiled back at him. "I like to think of myself as an Eighties-coloured, bohemian-chic hippie in cowboy boots."

ooo ooo ooo ooo

"Spencer? Do you want pizza or Chinese?" Calliope called from the kitchen as she picked up the phone.

"Whichever you want."

"Okay, String Bean, you decide. You can't let me pick every single time or eventually you're going to get tired to eating what I want."

"I honestly don't care, Calliope."

"You will in twenty years when your wife doesn't even ask what you want anymore," Calliope sighed and rolled her eyes, shoving the two menus into his hands. "Pick one. I don't care if you close your eyes and point. Pick one."

"Chinese," he smiled, resisting the urge to pull her close and kiss her for dozenth time today. Yes, he really, _really_ wanted to kiss her, but he didn't want to ruin this by rushing anything.

"Did you put the movie in?" she asked as she dialed the number for the Chinese restaurant.

"It's all set up." Spencer took a Coke out of the fridge and listened as she ordered more food than either of them could eat in two days. She put the phone back down and turned around to catch him looking at her.

"Are you watching me, Dr. Reid?"

Spencer sputtered for a moment, unsure of what to say, but stopped when she walked over and hugged him, resting her head on his chest. "I didn't mean to stare, Sweetheart. You're just... absolutely beautiful."

"You're a suck up," she laughed, pushed herself up on her toes and kissed his cheek before tucking her head back where it had been. Happily, he wrapped his arms around her, holding her close. He kissed the top of her head, her curly hair still wet. "Do you like Halloween?"

"What?" Spencer asked, startled at her sudden question.

"Do you like Halloween?"

"Yeah. It's my favorite holiday, actually. Why?"

"Every year The Hobbit Hole gets all decorated up and puts on a haunted house for the kids. All of Caroline Street decorates and the shop owners hand out candy and stuff. I was wondering if you'd like to come – if you and the team aren't on a case, I mean."

"That sounds like a lot of fun. You sure do a lot at the bookstore. Doesn't the owner help out or does he have the employees do everything?" Spencer smiled at the idea of spending his favorite holiday with her.

"I, um, I kind of, er, well, you see… _I_ own The Hobbit Hole."

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**A/N:**

**I hope you like the one-shot! Takes place after 4x12 Soul Mate.**

**This is an out-take from my multi-chapter _Mystery Muse_ which focuses on Spencer and Calliope. It takes place after chapter two. So, if you like this and want to read more, that's where you find it. Along with almost all my other one-shots, which are S&C-centric.  
**

**I wonder what Calliope told Spencer to trust her about? Hmmm....... I wonder... :o)**

**Thanks for reading! Tell me what you think, good or bad! I love knowing your reactions.**

**Love, Thalia**


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